


raise it high (and drink it dry)

by clutzycricket



Series: we play the game they fix [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5728846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Balerion, controller of the underworld in Westeros, is setting their sights on Petyr Baelish. Trys Martell is determined to find out the mystery of Alayne Stone. Ned Dayne just wants to keep his best friend out of trouble.</p><p>Alayne just wants to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	raise it high (and drink it dry)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Anais Mitchell's Hadestown.

“This is a terrible idea,” Edric Dayne said from the privacy of their booth. The mysterious Balerion ran Oldstones, someone more myth than bootlegger, but they were undisputed ruler of the Westerosi underworld, and Oldstones was neutral ground for anyone who claimed it. When Trys and Edric met, it was either through the backdoor of the Sandship or here at Oldstones.

“Bal said Alayne Stone was no more Littlefinger’s daughter than Ari is,” Trys pointed out, sipping his drink. “Which raises the question- who is she really, and why is cautious Petyr Baelish, with so very much to hide and with so much at stake, taking such a risk?” At least you could trust the rum here- they said that when some of the Gulltown merchants tried to slip Balerion some of the wood-grain poison the cheaper shops down in Flea Bottom and other places used, the dragon made a point with fire, spells, and their favorite gunman.

The murders hadn’t been investigated _too_ hard, though. Gulltown and the Vale were insular to start with, always looking down their noses from their perches up on the slopes, and Littlefucker owned half the Cloaks, true, but Balerion was scarier.

He tilted his head. He wasn’t Trys, who lived for clever puzzles the way some men lived for a good dancer or some fuzzy spells or some snow after the war, but he wasn’t _stupid_. And no matter if he was the Sword of the Morning or not, he still trusted Trys, and followed where he went. So he had more information than most, and he knew that if Trys was being forced to do something for Balerion, Trys would be annoyed.

Instead, Trys looked… amused. As if he had a secret, the way he always did when Balerion was mentioned and it was only the two of them.

Ah, well. If it was important, or if he could, Trys would tell him.

Instead of thinking about things he couldn’t solve, he focused on the tall young woman with the curly hair, sitting slightly nervously with Myranda Royce. 

“Should I go first, or should you?” he asked, draining his drink.

Trys grinned. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

~

Alayne is watching as Myranda goes to get their drinks, deliberately soaking up the attention she gets in her carefully crafted gowns, reflecting that her friend might have left her alone on purpose. Myranda had been a little distant since Petyr had made it clear he wanted Alayne to marry Harry Hardyng.

(A lifetime ago, a girl with snowflakes in hair like blood would have a sharp sister to make remarks about his the words Harry says, and how he treats his lady friends.)

“I think your friend is a bit distracted,” said a pale-haired man with a bemused expression. “I almost feel sorry for the fellows- I’ve seen that expression before, and it usually leads to the fellow getting hurt.”

“Really, Arianne is much better at it,” the second man said, sliding in the booth next to him, leaving room for Alayne to make an admittedly undignified exit if she needs to. “She usually has Tyene with her. Also Obara.” He winced. “Never underestimate those two.” He grinned, something wicked in his grin. “Trystane Martell, at your service.”

“Edric Dayne, responsible for keeping him in line,” the first said with a long-suffering expression. 

“You enjoy my antic disposition,” Trystane Martell- this was going to be a problem- said, trying to look innocent.

“No, no I don’t, don’t you listen when I say ‘Trys, no, if your Uncle Oberyn would do it, it is a bad plan,’?” Edric said, rolling his eyes.

“The incident with Cersei Lannister, the sheets, and the fake medium was hilarious, though,” Trys said, waggling his eyebrows.

Sansa couldn’t help it- she broke down giggling at the remembrance of that bit of gossip, which someone had turned into an absolutely _filthy_ poem.

“It also does not count as a valid confession,” Edric said dryly.

“Ah, yes, but the lady found pleasure in it,” Trys said suggestively, waggling his eyebrows. Sansa started laughing harder, knowing she was turning red in the face and not caring. 

They spoke for hours, until Myranda finally extracted herself from her suitors to come and fetch her.

“Will you visit again?” Edric asked hopefully, mournful violet eyes clashing with the red-faced cheeks laughter had left him with.

“We’ll come by tomorrow, possibly, or the day after, if her father is too busy plotting with her,” Myranda said, reeking of gin. Alayne, settling herself, decided that she would drive.

Trys seemed to come to the same realization. “Which of you is taking the roads?”

“I shall, since Myranda was kind enough to take us here,” Alayne said demurely, as if she hadn’t been hearing truly shocking stories and making her own observations on them.

~

The woman had eyes the color of the sea, not the sky, Trys decided when they finally met by daylight, Alayne suggesting the Godswoods as a neutral place to meet. Something about the artificially darkened hair- which was much more obvious now in the daylight, slightly uneven in some spots, too uniform in others, fading to nearly auburn at the roots- set off her blue eyes and gave them a steely cast.

“I’ve never been here before,” she said, the lie perfectly practiced. 

“I know you aren’t Littlefinger’s daughter,” he said, in response, feeling as much as hearing Edric sigh behind him. “So does Balerion.”

“The Martells are independent operators,” she said, with remarkable calm. “Even more so than others.”

True. After the war, Edmure Tully and what was left of his lot had fallen completely under… Balerion’s banner, while the Lannisters were crumbling and falling to the Tyrells, who also operated by Rhae’s laws. So did a few other low-level operators who made up her network, from the strange man she took to her bed to Chat who had brought up her suspicions that Littlefucker was forcing girls into his brothels.

The Starks and the Baratheons were gone, scattered or dead, and they said the Stormborn witch had done something foolhardy in Slaver’s Bay. The Blackfyre boy had died in the war, and no one was quite cruel enough to mention him in Balerion’s presence. (Or tired enough of life to mention it in front of her lover.) Asha Greyjoy ran some of the smuggling, true, but the Iron Fleet had been destroyed by witchstorm thrice over, and she was focusing on rebuilding. She’d taken Balerion’s offer after a good bit of bargaining.

“Because Littlefinger has been operating in ways that none of us will tolerate,” Edric said, with remarkable gentleness. “Slynt is dead, and Bywater isn’t going to be bribed. Balerion and the Lords made their decision, and it wasn’t in Littlefinger’s favor. He was a war profiteer, Aly, and that much is actually public knowledge. It’s what got him Harrenhal and Lady Lysa’s bed.”

“No, no, she would have taken him without it,” Alayne said, a ghastly shade of grey. “She loved him since she was a girl.”

“That isn’t what he told the Lannisters,” Trys said. “He said he’d need the power for it, so they forged the deeds. I wonder if Lady Lysa remembered that Shella Whent was her aunt?”

Alayne was shaking like a leaf, and Trys knew his suspicions were correct, and he wanted to hold Aly and kiss her until she stopped shaking for _that_ reason while Edric came up with the words to make this right.

“Then Balerion found Jeyne Poole, who he’d kept in one of his brothels until he sold he told to the Boltons,” he threw out, and Alayne went suddenly, terribly still, and he noticed the birds settling in the trees, all seeming to watch them.

“Mother have mercy…” Edric said, something like wonder in his voice.

“It appears,” Alayne said, still frigid, “that I must have a word with my father.”

“Not like this,” Trys prayed his hands wouldn’t get frozen over or some other strange Northern magic, but all he feels is the soft, blue-grey wool of Sansa’s dress, and her face is very near his. “We have a plan, and we’ll want you in on it, but running off will only get you killed. You’re safe, now, and we’re going to make them all pay.”

“Not because of revenge,” Edric added sounding like Ellaria a bit, “but because we’re tired of this, and we want it to end.”

She crumbled and cried silently, because noisy sobs were beaten out of her during the war, and she just wanted to _rest_.

~

It the plan didn’t happen at Oldstones, because they all agree that keeping Oldstones safe- and keeping Bywater _away_ from it- is the best of the long-term plans.

(”He’s a good man,” Rhae said to Trys and Oberyn, fingering a chain of amber that had belonged to her mother. “I would hate to have to kill him.”

Because she is as good a shot as any, despite the magic-and-clockwork arm, and a damn good sorceress, so she’d do the job, same as Slynt.)

Besides. the Tyrells want Baelish gone as much as anyone else, so the little speakeasy with the black, seven-pointed star painted on the doorway of the little basement entrance works as well as anything. It empties into the river, anyway.

Baelish thinks that he’s picking up his wayward ward from a night on the town, and Sansa Stark is selling it, her dye-stripped hair hidden by Tyene’s illusion spells, her dress a magnificent beaded concoction of gold and bronze meant for Nym, the only woman nearly tall enough to trade dresses with. _Nearly_ being the key word, meaning that the dress is close to causing a riot, swinging with the colored pearls Arianne had leant her.

(Tyene and Arianne had smiled at Edric and Trys and said that their lady love would be _fun_ to dress. While Edric sputtered, Trys smiled one of his cat-smiles and said she would be more fun to un-dress, succeeding in making the Sword of the Morning actually choke in embarrassment. Sansa had turned terribly red when she walked in, but had smiled and asked Edric for some lessons with the delicate pearl-handled pistol she had been gifted with.)

So Baelish had walked in, following Sansa with a look that was not at all fatherly. She had given him a cold, dismissive look that Edric never wanted turned on him, and whirled off, Trys and Edric taking her arms.

Balerion’s men took Baelish’s arms, silencing him.

~

Edric was used to waking up to curly hair in his face, just not a bright red and not quite so long. He remembered the night before, and Sansa standing there in her heels and the holster that she was still a little skittish around- they would need to work on that- ordering them to undress, and the laughing tangle of bodies after Trystane’s “ _fuck_ , that is possibly the most attracted to a woman I’ve been in my life.”

(Well, he was paraphrasing.)

He pulled the blanket a little higher, noticing that Sansa was a victim of Trys’ tendency to tangle around his bed partner and burrow. 

Though really, he did pick a lovely location for it. Lucky bastard.

Ah, well, there was always next time.


End file.
